


Recipe Substitutions

by patster223



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Airship slice of life, Found Birthday?, Found Family, Gen, Memory Loss, Vague S4 spoilers, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25960975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/pseuds/patster223
Summary: Zolf blinks. “You don’t know...when your own birthday is?”“Nope,” Cel says.“Right,” Zolf says decidedly. “Well, congratulations, then—it’s your birthday today.”Or: Zolf and Cel make a birthday cake.
Relationships: Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom & Zolf Smith
Comments: 20
Kudos: 57





	Recipe Substitutions

**Author's Note:**

> Cel and Zolf friendship live rent-free in my brain. Set somewhere in the S4 airship arc.

When Zolf visits Cel in the engine room during his daily rounds, he usually doesn’t have much to say. His check-in’s amount to a short “Engine still working?” to which Cel explains the engine’s performance (great, because Cel made it), how explode-y everything is at the moment (slightly, because Cel made it), and the quality of the engine’s sparks today (magnificent, because, well...Cel made it).

Zolf never seems to get the _complete_ gift of Cel’s report, but he always gives an approving nod before moving on to his next task. Today, however, Zolf hesitates at the door. 

“Anything else you need, Mr. Smith?” Cel asks. 

“Yeah, uh…” Zolf scratches his head self-consciously, looking at his clipboard rather than Cel. “When’s your birthday?”

Cel cocks their head. “Huh. What a random question! Not that there’s anything wrong with that—I’ve actually found that benign but unusual questions can be an _excellent_ way to get to know another person—but, Mr. Smith, I’m given to believe that such questions are usually supposed to be more...open-ended than that? In order to best draw out conversation.”

“It’s not a—bloody icebreaker question,” Zolf grumbles. He gestures Cel nearer and lowers his voice. “Look, I just need an excuse to throw a party. The crew’s been getting a bit restless, and if this goes on like it has been, we might get our mutiny a bit sooner than we want.”

“So the plan is to pacify them with a party, huh?” Cel frowns. “Convoluted, yet also underhanded...I have to say, that seems quite unlike you, Mr. Smith.”

Zolf mutters something under his breath.

“Pardon?”

“It was Hamid’s idea,” Zolf admits. “Look, I might be first mate, but I don’t know how crew morale works, all right? If the darts ain't enough for them, I’ve got no clue what to do. The party thing seems stupid, but Hamid’s the most social-y person I know, so…”

“That _does_ seem like a more Hamid approach to things than a Zolf approach," Cel says happily, pleased to have clarity. Then they realize the implications of their words and wince. "Ah, not to say that either approach is necessarily _better_ than the other, o-or that you couldn’t have a fun approach to things too if you wanted to, but…” 

“ _Thanks_.”

Cel thankfully gets sidetracked from that particular conversation thread as they begin imagining Zolf’s proposal. 

“Oh, a party could be so much _fun_ though,” they sigh. “Given how much our little crew has gone through, I think we could benefit from the boost in morale as well. _Oh,_ and it could even be an excuse to finally get Azu and Kiko together; we set up a dance floor, put on some conveniently slow music while they’re already standing next to each other, and there you have it!” Cel beams. “What an excellent idea, Mr. Smith!”

“Sure,” Zolf says, blushing furiously. “Fine, whatever, that too, I guess. So long as it means that nobody’s about to mutiny before we want them to.” He clears his throat. “So, is your birthday close? Less than a month off, ideally?”

“Hmm....You know, I have no idea.”

Zolf blinks. “You don’t know...when your own birthday is?”

“Nope,” Cel says, smiling as they take great pleasure in popping the _p_ before remembering the subject matter and frowning again. “I mean, I’m sure I knew at _some_ point, but it’s been...oh, quite a while since I’ve had reason to remember. And all of the people who could’ve remembered it for me are gone, so…”

Cel shrugs. It’s something they try not to think about much. They have so many _other_ things that they could think about instead—so many possible futures that lay in front of them—that there seems to be little point in getting caught up in the past. They suspect that that sort of thinking wouldn’t go well for them anyway.

Zolf is staring at his clipboard again, brows furrowed. His face has that one particular frown he gets sometimes, the one that creases his face with worn and familiar lines, which Cel has come to recognize as a sign of upcoming action from the man: like thunder that sounds right before the rainstorm hits. 

“Right,” Zolf says decidedly, giving Cel a short nod. “Well, congratulations, then—it’s your birthday today.”

With that, he walks out of the engine room. 

“Mr. Smith?” Cel checks the engine—should be fine on its own—and then dashes after Zolf. “Zolf!”

Zolf is walking at a determined clip, but Cel’s legs are long enough that it takes no effort for them to catch up to him. 

“Where are you going?” they ask. 

“The kitchen,” Zolf says. “I’m going to make you a birthday cake.”

“But it’s...not my birthday.”

The two of them enter the kitchen, which is empty aside from a kobold peering beneath the stove. Cel gives them a discreet shake of the head—they’ve already checked, and the fang is definitely _not_ in the kitchen—to which the kobold gives a grateful nod and scampers away. 

Cel hops on top of the countertop—ignoring Zolf’s side eye at the motion—and watches with curiosity as Zolf begins rummaging through the cupboard with practiced efficiency. 

“Do you even have the ingredients for a cake?” Cel wonders. 

“A bit of a rubbish cake, but it’ll do,” Zolf says, nodding approvingly at the jar in his hands before setting it aside. He leans past Cel to grab his apron and ties it swiftly around his waist. “Ration cake ain’t all that bad, though. You’d be surprised how close you can get to the real thing without any dairy. The tricky part is mostly the texture-”

Cel listens intently. Apart from impassioned rants, mission briefs, or Campbell novels, this may be the longest they’ve ever heard Zolf talk about one subject. Said impassioned rants aside, Zolf is rarely one to flaunt his expertise. Cel can already feel their own mind whirring in response as they learn new principles about baking. It’s nice, and from their position on top of the countertop, Cel has the twin, rare experiences of being the one talking the least and of their long legs dangling pleasantly into nothing. 

“-I can use a bit of my ration sugar to make up for it, I reckon,” Zolf thinks aloud as he vigorously stirs in the wet ingredients. “I don’t mind my meals being a bit bland for a couple weeks. Not that Siggif would notice if I nicked it from him—man wouldn’t know good food if it nipped him in the bum. I mean, did you _hear_ what he said about my stew the other day?”

“Stealing sugar doesn’t seem like a good way to stop the mutiny,” Cel says absently. “You’d have to throw a whole other party to make up for it. I suppose that wouldn’t be a _bad_ thing, but it seems like a cycle that would get out of hand quite quickly…”

“Huh?” Zolf frowns. He shakes his head at himself as he finally parses Cel's words. “Oh, right, the party. I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t _actually_ steal his sugar. I’m not that bad of a first mate.”

Cel cocks their head at Zolf. 

“Zolf…” they wonder. “Not that I doubt your intentions, but—are you sure that this exercise is _entirely_ about the mutiny?”

Zolf rolls his eyes. “What, you think I actually _want_ to deal with all this nonsense?”

“Hamid told you to throw a _party ,_ ” Cel reminds him. “To cool things down. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but, knowing Hamid, I don’t _believe_ he mentioned anything about polling the entire crew about their birthdays, arbitrarily assigning a birthday to someone who didn't have one, using your month’s sugar to make a cake, and then getting all like….this.” 

Cel gestures to where Zolf is stirring his ingredients with the intensity that he sometimes talks about the gods or the end of the world. His normally neat apron and shirt sleeves are covered in flour from his efforts. 

Zolf stares at himself, curses, and fruitlessly swabs at the flour on his apron. After a few ineffectual pats, he gives up with a sigh. “Too much, huh?”

“No,” Cel says forcefully, because they’ve never believed that anyone could be too much. “I _do_ appreciate the effort—honestly, it’s been...a _really_ long time since someone put in that kind of effort for me, thank you—but I’m just saying that it seems like...it seems there might be emotional layers to this deeper than the original plan of ‘throw a party, slow down the mutiny.’”

“Eh, always the case with me, isn’t it?” Zolf mutters, rolling his eyes at himself. 

“It’s not bad to be emotional!” Cel protests. “Quite the opposite! In fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, it seems like cooking is a very healthy way for you to process those emotions. I’m just saying that creating a fake party as an excuse to cook might be...stretching it a bit…”

“Yeah, well, what else is new?” Zolf says darkly. He dips a finger in the batter and tastes it with a hum. “You want to try some?”

“Are you asking that to avoid the question?”

“I’m _asking_ because I genuinely want your opinion,” Zolf groans. “It’s _your_ cake.”

Something fragile and hidden inside of Cel stings at Zolf’s words, because, actually, people _don’t_ make them cakes, because there’s little reason why anybody would _want_ to make them a cake—and there hasn't been for some time—which isn’t something that Cel normally has to think about, except now they _do_ , because there is an inexplicable cake-to-be sitting right in front of them.

“It’s not actually my birthday,” Cel finally mutters. 

“Well, maybe it bloody well could be if you would just let me make you a cake!” Zolf throws his spatula down and leans on the counter next to Cel with a huff. “Look, you have me wrong. Being underhanded? Having motives within motives? That stuff doesn’t come naturally to me. That’s Wilde’s territory. If I do something, it’s because I felt called to do it. I’m making you a cake because you said you didn’t remember your birthday and I felt...some kind of way about that,” Zolf admits. He presses forward, even though it looks like it hurts him to do so. “I felt _sad_ about it, so I decided to make you a cake. Yes, my emotions are deep and messy and... _complicated,_ but my reasons aren’t. I’m not trying to play a _game_ here, I’m just...trying to make you a god damned cake.”

“Huh,” Cel says. They stare down at Zolf, who still isn’t quite looking at them. The tips of his ears are pink again, though it’s clearly from embarrassment at being caught out rather than actual frustration or anger. 

It’s weird. Cel has always felt a bit cautious about Zolf, associating him with angry—albeit righteous—outbursts and a keen sadness that hurts their heart to look at. It reflects some sister sadness inside of Cel that they’d rather not acknowledge: the monstrous part of themself that they’ve been trying to keep tamped down with rigorous self-analysis and caretaking of their own emotions. 

Zolf doesn’t seem beholden to that same rigor. The man practically overflows with emotion; it floods out of him as if he were a pond spilling over or a faucet with a broken handle. His sadness and anger are palpable things that affect the people around him. Now, Cel wonders if his positive emotions—compassion, determination, generosity—work on that same principle. It would make the hope cleric thing make a bit more sense. 

Cel dips their finger in the batter, thinks about tasting it, and then, instead, uses it to draw a smiley face on Zolf’s apron. 

“W-what did you do that for?” Zolf asks, finally startled enough to look at them. 

“You were sad,” Cel explains, "so I ‘felt called’ to bring you out of your head a bit. And...I guess I felt a bit sad too, so I wanted to try it to see what would happen.” They smile, though they know that it’s about as crooked as Zolf’s is right now. “Silly, right? But it made us both smile. I'm not that complicated either, Zolf.”

Zolf raises an eyebrow, then glances at the ship that they’re standing in—that Cel _built_ from practically nothing—as if to say _you bloody well are._

“Anyone can engineer,” Cel insists. They put a finger to their chin thoughtfully. “I mean, I suppose I’m a _little_ complicated given my skill set, longevity, lineage, history, dolphin shapeshifting, and...well, other things, but I could say the same thing of you. _R_ _eally,_ you and I are only as complicated as any other sentient being who tries to behave logically without truly understanding that logic is an internal construct. _But,_ since that’s just every sentient being, in reality, we’re all quite simple, because at that point we can just accept that nobody makes any sense at all. It’s so complicated that it wraps back around to being simple again!” Cel sighs wistfully. “Isn’t that something, Mr. Smith?”

Zolf gives a short, low laugh. “This isn’t...actually convincing me that people aren’t complicated, you know.” He shakes his head. “You see things so differently than me…”

“Don’t worry; that is inherently accounted for in my complication = simplicity theory.”

Zolf chuckles again and goes back to stirring the batter. 

“Baking is kind of like that, I guess,” Zolf says, squinting at the batter before dashing a bit more water into it. “Most recipes look like utter nonsense to me, and then I think, oh right, it’s just flour mixed in with some other stuff.” He gestures to the ration batter. “Doesn’t even need to be the right stuff.”

“Engineering is the same way! Although...mixing and matching _does_ come with a higher chance of blowing off your eyebrows when you’re working with elementals rather than flour...”

“You’d be surprised how dangerous baking can be.”

Cel makes a mental note to look into baking more. 

“Eyebrows are overrated anyway,” Cel says. They lay down on the counter with a sigh, ignoring Zolf’s glare as their hair no doubt mixes with the flour and other bits of mess left behind by his baking excursion. 

“I know it frustrates you,” they admit, “but it actually makes me happy that things are complicated, Mr. Smith. It's...It's easier to come to terms with forgetting things when I'm just an explode-y mess anyway. It's like with your batter—as long as all the bits and bobs and giblets and little details are mixed in there, it doesn’t matter what they were in the first place or if you lost track of a bit of it, because, well, it’s still cake in the end, isn’t it?”

Zolf gives a sad smile. This expression is also familiar to Cel by now—it is similar to Zolf’s frown, in that it makes apparent all the creases worn onto his face by sadness and time, but it has the different effect of sparking the strange flare of hope that rests inside of Cel, regardless of how dim it sometimes is after all their years. 

“You calling my cake a giblet mess?” Zolf says, nudging Cel’s leg. 

“I wouldn’t dare,” Cel says, nudging him back with their leg. “Not when I know it would threaten my sugar supply.”

“I said I wouldn’t actually _do_ it!”

Cel laughs, thunking their legs happily on the cupboard, though they soften the motion to softer taps at a glare from Zolf. 

“You know,” they say softly. “Even if it’s a part of an elaborate scheme to pacify the crew, I think...I think it’d be quite nice to have a birthday again.”

“Well, I’m...glad. Happy birthday.” Zolf glances at them. “You could, er...tell me about your other birthdays, if you want. The ones you remember.”

Cel smiles. “Ah, an open-ended get-to-know-you question, Zolf? I’m impressed!”

Zolf scowls. “I told you; I _don’t_ do icebreakers.”

Cel laughs again and begins recounting one of their earlier birthdays. They don’t quite remember how old they were—late 20’s? Possibly early 30’s; they were definitely still in America—but they remember the sweet bean cake their lover of the time made for them, the gleeful shriek of the homemade fireworks they set off, and the sighs of relief they and their friends gave as the scorching heat of the day faded into a cool evening breeze.

Scorching heat, huh...perhaps they originally had a summer birthday. It’s not summer right now, but Cel doesn’t mind the discrepancy. They think that an autumn birthday would be nice too; much cooler, certainly, and with the promise of new beginnings that summer feels too bittersweet to entirely provide. 

During their story, Zolf listens intently, occasionally humming under his breath but clearly dividing his attention cleanly between Cel and the cake. As Cel trails off trying to remember the exact recipe for a sweet bean cake—were those ingredients even available outside of America…?—Zolf nudges the bowl of batter toward them.

“It’s your birthday cake—mind giving it the seal of approval before I pop it in the oven?”

Cel dips their finger in the batter and tastes it. It’s a bit dry, as Zolf originally warned, but the vanilla is perfectly sweet, and Zolf’s careful mixing had rendered the mixture smooth and rich against their tongue. It’s simple—at the end of the day, it’s still a ration cake—but it soothes something inside Cel, makes them feel cozy in a way that they so rarely are. 

“It’s fantastic, Zolf,” Cel says, feeling that same cozy feeling when Zolf’s face lights up in response. 

The cake tastes even better once it’s baked to perfection under Zolf’s careful watch; once they’re all sitting out on the deck of the ship, sweating and tired from a day of hard work followed by an evening of dancing; once everyone is breathless from laughter recounting birthday stories and mishaps of their own; and once everyone is singing and bellowing out well wishes as Cel blows out their candles. 

They don’t bother counting out the candles; they know that the number isn’t and couldn’t be accurate. But the melancholy that comes with this fact is bittersweet instead of crushing and is outmatched by the sheer sweetness of their birthday cake. 


End file.
